Monsters need time to mature. No one is born predisposed to be evil. To say otherwise would be to underestimate the depth of Homo Sapiens Sapiens. Beings spat from the mother's womb as the most harmless organism on the planet, only to immediately become the supreme kings of the food chain, apex predators.
It's easy to say that serial killers are crazy and belong with the black sheep of the flock. The fucked up part is accepting that they are just like you and me, but marked by different experiences that unleashed the horror. I think even I would have turned out differently if Tiara had been there for me more instead of spending all day working, or if she had sat down with me to seriously ask if something was wrong...
But that is only a hypothesis, impossible to prove at this stage of the game.
To admit that monsters are built would be to accept that anyone, from a church priest to the lady running the charity auction, can reach a level of cruelty that surpasses the instincts of wild creatures. No one wants to carry the responsibility for evil. The masks and costumes of monsters in movies aren't to protect the killer; they serve to protect humanity, to make people believe that evil is inhuman, when there is nothing more inherently human than evil.
Rest easy, you can't rape, or kill, or appear as the villain in a TV documentary... What a sweet lie.
There's a reason they give nicknames to psychopaths. They turn them into advertisements, two-dimensional puppets that plague newspaper headlines to entertain or scandalize. He's not Pedro Alonso López; he's the Monster of the Andes. He's not Jeffrey Dahmer; he's the Milwaukee Cannibal. The media machine turns them into stories that sell well, as real as Michael Myers or Chucky. We can make movies, articles, songs, so much noise that the sound of sliced meat and the screams of the victims can barely be distinguished. A minute of silence for the deceased. A lifetime of uproar for the one who killed them.
Minor and major crimes. Light damage, severe damage. Serial killers, crimes of passion. Hundreds of classifications to blur the human carnage. In a fair world, any evil would be paid with a bullet to the head. Here everything is labeled and cataloged in an attempt at justice, providing the species with a false layer of righteousness.
When the skins are peeled back and the beauty is destroyed, what is left underneath? A monster. We all are. But not enough bleach has splashed on our faces yet to reveal us as such.
A face that in its monochrome carries more colors than anything else. A face that lacks the falseness of the modern world. He watches from the window, he will kill you, no matter how much you beg. Is there anything more fair and egalitarian than that?
Nina gave me the location of the grave. I lied and told her I was just going to look. It's 1:00 AM, the mist is high, and the crickets are singing in the distance. Daniel and I face the headstone; someone painted the word MURDERER over Jeff's name.
The afternoon drizzle softened the earth, making our job easier and leaving a pleasant scent of damp grass. We started digging, the shovels going deeper and deeper. Fifteen minutes later we stopped to return to the surface, and I stared full of disappointment into that dark, empty hole.
Katie Robinson is currently 25 years old. She works as a nurse at The Sacred Heart Hospital, the same place where they supposedly treated Jeff. I don't know if it's a joke or a coincidence.
I got her schedule and intercepted her on her way to the entrance. I told her my intentions about discussing Jeff the Killer; she told me to get lost, but I made her change her mind with a 20 dollar bill. We agreed to meet in the parking lot during her break.
These seven years suited her wonderfully. The obesity is gone, leaving her with a siren's waist and meaty thighs that draw the eye. She also dyed her hair and tanned her skin in an attempt to forget her old self. She takes a seat on the hood of a car, crosses her legs, and for a few seconds I managed to see her pink panties.
"Aren't you a little young to be a journalist?" she asks and lights a cigarette. Her nails are painted pastel blue.
"School news."
"Weird. When I was in high school the newspaper kids only published the lunch schedule and pretentious poems no one read. Never dead people. Nor serial killers."
"Well, I'm not a journalist, but that doesn't matter. I just want to know your version of events, the original one."
She inhales the nicotine and spits out a puff of smoke. She tells me the exact same story from the newspapers. Without any difference, as if she had practiced every sentence over and over again.
"Is that the truth...?" I narrowed my eyes.
Katie bursts out laughing.
"It's not. The truth is much simpler and mundane, as always."
"You lied?"
"Yes and no. I started the game, then I played along, but eventually I got bored and moved on to something else. The media never got tired and kept releasing articles or documentaries about Jeff, until the story stopped being a novelty," She drops her sandals and stretches her toes. "You see, that night dad and I fought. I was tense. The bitches I hung out with stole my clothes while I was showering and wrote Filthy Pig in lipstick on the mirror. I managed to get them back, but not without receiving a wave of mockery that made me really want to slit my throat. I wandered around the city praying that some angry thief or rapist would do me the favor. I wasn't that lucky. I got home very late. Dad was furious; he was never the understanding type, even less so since my sister died. He yelled. I yelled. He slapped me. I snapped, grabbed a knife, and stabbed him right in the arm."
With the cigarette, she mimics a stabbing motion.
"I cried and threw up as soon as I realized what I did. Or did the vomit come first? Old man Florek must have heard all the commotion and called the cops. Dad is an idiot, but he loves me. He didn't want them to send me to a reformatory or label me as violent. We were going to keep it all a secret, but then we heard the sirens."
"The articles say Mr. Florek saw a suspicious man entering your room."
"Mr. Florek was a decrepit old man. Do you know how old he was back then? 84 years old. Do you know how old he is now? Five years dead. Maybe he saw a cat, heard the screams, and mistook it all for a burglary. He was also a racist piece of shit. His first statements talked about a suspicious black man breaking into my room."
She pauses to smoke.
"Dad broke the window. I opened the door for the police. I acted hysterical to avoid giving statements and screeched until they let me go with him to this hospital. Yes, right where we are now. In reality, the wound wasn't that serious."
Katie reveals that they agreed on a single version of events and told the police that some guy, who they couldn't see well because of the dark, tried to rob them. In the struggle, Mr. Robinson got hurt. The cops weren't surprised and said they would do everything possible to catch the culprit.
But what about Jeff? Go to sleep? How did you come up with the story? Where was the horror born...? Katie shoves my chest with her foot. I hadn't realized I closed the distance. I apologized, and she resumed her story.
"Around those years I started smoking. I was too fat, I loathed my body, and I preferred killing myself with nicotine than relapsing into the tears of self-pity. Since dad knew nothing about my habit, and smoking is prohibited in the hospital, I came down here to blow off steam. I was just finishing my third cig when I noticed a little girl looking at me. Right over there."
She points to a concrete pillar in the distance.
"She was so pale I mistook her for a ghost, and out of fear I dropped the lighter. I bent down to pick it up and when I straightened up, the little demon girl was right at your distance. I jumped, but up close she didn't look like a ghost anymore, and instead of running away I got mad. She wasn't scared by my yelling; she just kept staring at me."
"What was her name?"
"What do I know? She got on my nerves and I decided to leave. Then she grabbed my hand hard, almost digging her nails in. She talked to me about her imaginary friend, a sort of prince with skin as white as milk, an always attentive gaze, and a disposition to never stop smiling. Ring a bell? It's him. The girl said she met him in this hospital and since then he never stopped looking after her. She also warned me that tonight he would visit me."
"Sounds like a horror story."
"And not a very good one... A couple of nurses arrived and dragged her away, with her kicking and laughing. I found out later that the little girl was schizophrenic. It explains a lot, but not everything. Her warning came true and that night I dreamed about him. He looked nothing like a prince; his attentive gaze was bloodshot and his wonderful smile looked like something a madman carved into himself with a knife. He whispered to me in a horrifying voice: Go to sleep."
The cigarette between Katie's fingers was close to burning out, and a shiny layer of sweat formed on her forehead. For a moment, she looked just as terrified as Natalie the night she died.
"I woke up screaming... Dad came running and hugged me to calm me down. For a while, every time I closed my eyes I saw the face again, until it slowly blurred away. By lunch I was calmer. A journalist approached me and handed me her card... I'm sure the journalist noticed my nerves, my anxiety from the nightmare. I told her the same thing I told the police, only this time I really was terrified... Then I had an epiphany, or a hunch, call it what you want. A lot of victims profit from their tragedy, right? It occurred to me that I could too, and I had something handy that terrified me to give the plot some color. I added the monster from my dream, hesitantly at first since I didn't know if they would believe me, but the further I went, the more attentive the journalist looked. I remember my hands were shaking... She looked nervous too. She asked me if my testimony was completely real. Then that demon in white appeared in my mind again, as if pushing me, and I started crying from fear."
Katie gives a clap and exclaims:
"Stop the presses! A monster is on the loose! Or a deranged, horribly deformed guy, it's the same thing. The news came out a few days later and attracted a lot of media attention, it became popular and it made me popular. It all gained more traction when testimonies of the same apparition started popping up all over the county, people terrified by ghostly-faced stalkers. Most likely it was due to a case of mass hysteria. Real or true? Doesn't matter! The story sells! I appeared on television to tell the events over and over again. I made good money, I was materially happy. But I didn't get carried away... The role of the near-victim isn't something I wanted to personify my whole life, especially when the alleged identity of the culprit started making rounds. How was I supposed to know that a crazy girl's imaginary friend, and the image from a nightmare, starred a real person?"
"Jeffrey Allen Woods."
"Exactly! I did my homework, I investigated who he was. The poor kid got into fights during a party, ended up drenched in alcohol and bleach, and then he was burned alive."
"So that part of the story is true."
"Sure. They rushed him to the ER here, tried to save him. His injuries were so severe that it didn't matter how much morphine they pumped into him; he kept screaming and thrashing so much he almost bit off his own tongue. In the end, he gave out and died three days after being admitted."
"He died three days later...?" I noticed a strange pressure in my stomach, like a dagger pressing against my gut. I ignored the sensation and kept digging. "And Jeff's body?"
"Horrible. I saw the pictures, they match the little girl's description of the imaginary friend pretty well. I still don't understand how he ended up like that; it would have been more human if he looked like toast. You know, Pompeii style. I bet the brat saw his face somehow and got traumatized."
"Are you 100% sure he died...? Where did they bury him?"
"The death certificates are in order. I heard a rumor that the family cremated him, but it's hard to confirm because the Woods moved to who knows where after the incident."
"That explains the missing corpse," I said without thinking.
Katie nods. She slides off the car, puts on her sandals, drops the cigarette, and steps on it.
"Why didn't you inform the police? Don't you think the world needs to know the truth? So Jeff's spirit can rest in peace after so many years."
Respecting their rest, coming from a grave robber, what a fucked up joke.
"The one who should be worrying about that is his killer. Earning a reputation as a lying bitch won't revive him or help anyone except the press. Vampires fall short compared to those people; they suck the life right out of you."
"I could tell them everything, maybe it's my chance to be popular."
"You won't," she says confidently. "I heard about the break-ins at the cemetery. How did you find out there isn't a body under the headstone...? I imagine you're the looter, or you know the looter, and it's not in your best interest to attract attention. Even if you were a saint, it would do little good to say it was all my invention... Jeff the Killer existed, killed people, and was murdered by our local police."
"You have it all figured out," I smiled.
"I'm smart. When you aren't pretty, you have to be, or the world will tear you to pieces. Now I am pretty, but I haven't stopped thinking hard, not even once."
"If Jeffrey was innocent, how do you explain the murders? Or the testimonies of people who ran into him?"
"Maybe some lunatic liked the story and wanted to replicate it. Maybe it inspired him. A lot of people become desensitized and look for a dumb excuse to take their misery out on the world, as if everything wasn't fucked up enough already."
"But the police assured that the culprit for everything was Jeffrey Allen Woods..."
"Jeff was innocent, few people know this. Jeff was guilty, many people know it. Maybe both are true."
"It makes no sense."
"It's not my job to make it make sense, either."
"An acquaintance showed me a video of Jeff's room... She told me Jeff was discharged and killed his family."
"Hospital room?" Katie arches an eyebrow.
I nodded.
"Fake," she assures. "Recording patients is illegal. Your friend tricked you. Or maybe I'm tricking you. How can you be certain? Sometimes you have to gather the pieces and form the truth that seems the most real to you, or the one that makes you the least uncomfortable. Pieces are always missing, or none are missing... But we hold them upside down and don't even realize it."
"You're quite the smooth talker, you know?"
The nurse flashes a half-smile.
"Are you 18, honey?" she asks me. I answered no. "Too bad... You're cute. And I have to get to work. Bye."
She turns around to leave. I felt the urge to rush and say:
"What if I killed someone because of that story?" I kept my hand in my anorak pocket, squeezing the pocketknife between my fingers, ready to jump at her jugular.
She startles, looks back over her shoulder straight into my eyes, trying to figure out if I'm joking. She realizes I'm not, and her expression turns sour.
"Since when do stories kill? Be a little man and accept your responsibilities. If you graduated to murderer it was by your own choice, no ghost or tulpa forced you," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose as if suffering a sudden migraine, then sighs. "I do believe this world is full of mystical energies and elements beyond our comprehension. But I'm not immature and naive enough to blame them for the evil in people. Like dad used to say: If the devil knocks on your door to buy your soul, you've probably been wanting to make a deal with him for a while. Want some hypocritical advice? Turn yourself in to the cops."
"I can't do that..."
"Then don't get caught. Leave before I memorize your face and you have to add me to your list of victims. Is it very long...?"
I shook my head. Katie walks away without adding more.
I leaned my back against the wall, slid down, and ended up sitting on the floor. I waited for police sirens for fifteen minutes, but no one came to read me my rights. Blood drips from the ceiling, seeping down from several rooms above, forming a puddle in front of my feet.
A pair of white hands burst from the scarlet stain, closing around my calves. The touch is so freezing it burns, dragging me into the puddle, where I sank as if it were quicksand. When the blood was above my nose, I managed to see a smiling little girl half-hidden behind the concrete pillar.
Nina, motherfucker.